The Academy had posted its permanent schedules that morning. By dinner, the students had stopped discussing Blocks as an achievement and begun treating them as an inconvenience.
Marian claimed a section of the Grand Dining Hall table before anyone else could, then planted her Academy card beside her tray as though the glowing schedule had personally offended her. Selphine sat beside her, Aurelian arrived with vegetables piled across half his plate, and Mireilla brought two cups because she had apparently changed her mind halfway through filling the first.
Their schedules spread across the table one card at a time.
